The Guts of FCA

Friday, January 6, 2012

Too much capitalism means too few capitalists…

"The modern rulers, who are simply the rich men, are really quite consistent in their attitude to the poor man. … That which wishes, in the words of the comic song, to break up the happy home, is primarily anxious not to break up the much more unhappy factory. Capitalism … is at war with the family, for the same reason which has led to its being at war with the Trade Union. This indeed is the only sense in which it is true that capitalism is connected with individualism. Capitalism believes in collectivism for itself and individualism for its enemies. It desires its victims to be individuals, or (in other words) to be atoms. For the word atom, in its clearest meaning (which is none too clear) might be translated as 'individual.' If there be any bond, if there be any brotherhood, if there be any class loyalty or domestic discipline, by which the poor can help the poor, these emancipators will certainly strive to loosen that bond or lift that discipline in the most liberal fashion. If there be such a brotherhood, these individualists will redistribute it in the form of individuals; or in other words smash it to atoms."

3 comments:

I think it's important to strike a distinction between capitalism and capitalists. Chesterton's words here absolutely have merit, but he's describing a flaw in man, rather than in the system. Isn't he?

Still, Chesterton is right. My own inclination is to start with the idea that, for any catholic (or Christian?) capitalism can never be seen as its own thing -- it has to come part and parcel with a certain culture, morality, etc in the norm. That is an extremely difficult thing to achieve. But then again, no one said Catholicism was supposed to be easy.

I agree, and you've noted a crucial factor, namely, that capitalism never exists in purely theoretical Platonic void: it is inescapably shaped by and formative of its social milieu. That was a key point for Marx, for example, that it was disingenuous of capitalists to abhor public education, since, he argued, the bourgoisie's educational influence had been public all along. One factor I think you should take more seriously, is that capitalism actually is nothing more than its 'users' (i.e. capitalists). The rational perfection (i.e. its utility derivative) of capitalism requires perfectly rational users if it is to perform in accord with its own model of itself (so to speak). The typical defense is that defections in rational utility do no more to falsify the capitalist "model" than adultery explodes the institution of marriage. Two faults arise, however, first that the model can't be claimed to be an *empirical* model if in the same breath proponents admit "no one ever really does x y and z", and, second, adultery is not an admitted (but regrettable) feature of marriage in the actual world, whereas the horrid "mixed economy" of capitalistic scorn is, as just mentioned, an inescapable defect in the actual 'usage' of rational utility.

A similar attack cannot be made on Christianity, at least not a robustly sacramental theology. Christians defect from the faith all the time, and people assume this "falsifies" Christianity, though it does not, for it is the supernatural efficacy of the sacraments themselves, even apart from defective participation in them, which grounds the truth and existence of Christianity. This is not to say the Church's holiness exists in a theoretical Platonic void, for it is precisely as sacraments (i.e. as 'clumps' of actual material spacetime with a divine power) that the sacraments are salvific. Indeed, if Christianity lacked sacramental power, such as in Protestantism, it really would be falsified by Christians' sins, for on an anti-sacramental theology, there is no other channel but believers (or rather the instrument of faith within them) by which God saves the world. This is basically Manicheanism, though, and the Christian origin of Protestantism keeps it effectively sacramental (viz. God speaks directly and infallibly by means of the Bible). Further, the existence of saints shows that perfect sanctity is possible in this world. The same does not hold for "perfect rational utility" or a "perfectly free market" or "perfectly free exchange", since, again, the scourge of mixed economy is granted by all parties.